Fugitive Cristiano Costa caught by North Yorkshire Police cycle sting (From York Press)

Fugitive Cristiano Costa caught by North Yorkshire Police cycle sting

1:05pm Wednesday 17th March 2010 in

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A FUGITIVE’S two-year spell on the run ended when he fell into a police trap aimed at catching bicycle thieves, York magistrates heard.

Waiter and disc jockey Cristiano Costa, 32, fled across the Pennines from Manchester to York when he was due in court to face a charge of wounding in Manchester. For two years, he managed to evade police attention.

But in the early hours of February 15, he spotted a £350 bicycle in Deangate and took it home. He did not realise it belonged to North Yorkshire Police, who were able to trace it.

Colette Dixon, prosecuting, said police walked in on him later the same day as he was respraying it black at his Huntington Road home in a bid to prevent its owner recognising it. He had two other bicycles, one of which had also been resprayed. After questioning him about his thefts, they served the bench warrant issued at Manchester Crown Court in January 2008.

Costa pleaded guilty at York Magistrates Court to theft of the police bicycle and asked for a second bicycle theft to be taken into consideration.

Magistrates fined him £250 with £85 prosecution costs and a £15 Government-imposed victim surcharge. Last week at Manchester Crown Court, he received a suspended prison sentence with 240 hours’ unpaid work and was ordered to pay £2,000 in compensation after admitting the wounding charge.

His solicitor Harry Bayman told magistrates he intended to use the police bicycle for himself. He had also taken the other two bicycles for his own use, believing one of them was so damaged its owner had abandoned it. He had been using the damaged one as spare parts for the other.

Costa, a Portuguese national, was sending money to his mother in Portugal, but could still afford to buy a bicycle for himself. He had been on his way home when he spotted the police bicycle and took it. Costa has been in the UK for seven or eight years.